"The Arab spring: Children of the revolution"

"The Arab spring
      Children of the revolution"
         How children have been affected by revolution in the Arab world? Before reading:

I)         Speaking task:

This question has been asked a lot lately.

“How children have been affected by revolution in the Arab world?”

“How these Arabic revolutions affected our children?”

“How did the Arab spring reflect on the children?”

After searching for information on the internet and in a whole-class discussion, talk about the different domains which the Arabic revolutions affected in the Arabic children lives, explaining in details how these effects are presented, and exemplifying in each point.

Your discussion must be organized, using the right accurate English language, and respecting others’ turns.

In order to help you direct your discussion, the next questions are the main questions that you have to answer:

- Did the Arab spring affect the children psychologically?

-Did it affect them physically?

-Did it reflect on their education?

The Arab spring

        Children of the revolution

         How children have been affected by revolution in the Arab world?

“The Arab spring has been famously youthful. In much of the Middle East and North Africa up to 70% of the population is under 30 years old; that fact has been discussed at length, but what of the children of those revolutions? How has the recent political upheaval in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia affected the very young? A fragmented mosaic of figures and anecdotes is beginning to build a picture.

In Libya, 4,000 children displaced during the 2011 uprising against Muammar Qaddafi from three of the conflict’s main hotspots—Ajdabiya, Brega and Ra's-Lanuf—displayed symptoms of psychological damage, according to a report by Save the Children, a charity. These included bed wetting, aggression and stammering. Some parents noticed their children holding up their fingers in the victory sign in their sleep. In Egypt, a recent survey of 500 children between the ages of nine and 12, carried out by the University of Cairo, found that 67% of them say their lives are worse now than before the revolution. Many show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and stress.

In Tunisia the effects are less pronounced. Nauffel Gaddour, head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit at the University of Monastir, a coastal town south of Tunis, says that cases of PTSD in his clinic rose by just 0.5% between 2003-2010 and 2011-2013. He suspects, however, that in the country's interior and in the region which borders Algeria—areas which remain unstable—the impact of the revolution on children's mental health may have been more extreme. "At least in the coastal areas, I think there is a general feeling among children that the revolution was something good, and I think this sentiment has helped to protect a lot of children from being severely traumatized,” he explains. But the Libyan children he visited in refugee camps in Tataouine, in Tunisia’s south, “are very badly scarred mentally, a lot worse than Tunisian children,” he says. “That has to be because the revolution in Libya was much more bloody." Indeed, Libya’s 500 remaining militia groups still boast children within its ranks.

Egyptian youngsters regularly clash with authorities—453 children, including some as young as nine years old, were detained between January and May this year following protests, according to a report by the Committee for the Defense of Egypt’s Demonstrators, a rights group. At a conference in April on violence in Tunisian schools, a primary-school inspector spoke of a spike in showdowns between teachers and students.

While reading:

II)        Using the dictionaries, look up the meanings and definitions of the highlighted words/expressions to help you understand the article better.

But the awakening has had some less pernicious effects on children, too. Young people today demonstrate a much bigger appetite for current affairs. “I never picked up a newspaper before the revolution,” says 14-year-old Asma from northern Tunis. “Now it’s a necessity.” Tunisian primary-school teachers report that their pupils’ vocabulary has expanded to include words like “revolution”, “liberation” and—somewhat less happily— “dégage”, French for “get lost”, a favored chant of protesters during the ousting of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Egyptian children have staged protests on school campuses, railing against everything from alleged abuse by teachers to cafeteria prices and the wearing of the veil. Libyan youngsters say they are happy to be part of a movement to change their country; some have volunteered to clean streets, restore buildings and direct traffic.

Yet such laudable revolutionary spirit does not always translate into political optimism. Speaking to “Pomegranate”, a group of Tunisians in their early teens zealously reel off their country’s emerging problems. “Drugs, violence and Salafis,” they chime. When asked about their expectations for the future, however, their faces crumple. They look cynically into the distance, shrug and, with polite waves, begin to walk away.”

After reading:

III)      As we already know, there are different types of evidence for arguments. Scan the article to extract from it the different evidences that the writer used in his arguments. Fill the next table with them:

Facts	Statistics	Quotations	Examples

                                   

IV)      Extract from the text the different symptoms of the psychological damage in children caused by the revolutions.

V)        Writing task 1: Explain in five to ten lines the shift in the sentiments and feelings of the Tunisian teens underlined in the last paragraph, clarifying the different signs that lead your response. 

VI)      Writing task 2: In a paragraph of ten lines, talk about your experience regarding the Arab spring, clarifying how these revolutions affected you and your family members.

VII)     Writing task 3: One of the main things that we have been witnessing nowadays is the huge emigration that’s taking place in our Arab world. And with this emigration the struggles of the Arabic refugees aren’t decreasing, in fact they are facing new kinds of problems and issues in their everyday’s life, and one of these problems is the way they are treated in the foreign schools.

From your experience as a student, and referring to the internet, in a well organized essay, explain how the Arabic children and teens must be treated in the schools outside their countries, listing and explaining the different methods that teachers must use in dealing with them.

Advocacy

                                     Advocacy

“All educators must become fighters for what they and their students need to be successful.” (Eskelsen Garcia, 2015, Page 4)

This quotation; which was said by Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of National Education Association, said it all; teachers’ roles aren’t limited only by being role models, guiders, facilitators, or monitors… teachers must also play the role of advocates that fight for their students’ rights as human beings, before defending their rights as learners in order to help them accomplishing their learning process.
This matter for advocacy is especially needed in our today’s classrooms, because of the changes that have occurred in the last couple of years (about ten years), precisely because of the series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa which obligated many people to immigrant from their countries to different foreign countries, where English is a must for them to survive. Researchers have shown that in just two short decades, English language learners enrollment in U.S. schools has grown 57 percent, compared to less than four percent growth for all students. ELL students comprise more than 10 percent of the total student population. (Eskelsen Garcia, 2015, Page 6)

This increase in the number of ELL students didn’t result only from the immigration that happened in the last few years, but it was also a result of the English language being a linguafranca, or in other words a global language that is used in the entire world, in every country of this world. English is no more related only in a country or a continent, but the whole world.

 Many factors made of the English language a linguafranca as: “Communication, travel, popular culture, education, symbolism, historical factors, economic development, globalization, the media, a global English language teaching industry, and business and entrepreneurship…” and of course the immigration caused by the wars in some Arabic countries nowadays is one of these major factors, which made of English language a weapon for the immigrants who need to use it. This fast growing of English language learners as second language makes us aware of the different ways we should try to teach the learners from different cultures and the different methods that help them get engaged in EFL classrooms, especially that those learners aren’t regular ones, but they are very special learners with special needs that we should pay attention to. Learners of English as a second language that are emigrating from their countries because of the wars and the crimes and that are traveling under very hard circumstances…require many extra needs focused individually on them to overcome the struggles they are suffering from.

Due to the fact that English language learners (ELLs) often do not have the same educational opportunities or outcomes as non-ELL students in the United States, it became a must to ask teachers to advocate for them. Even though, research talking on how advocacy can be achieved and what are the actions that are important for such achievement. However, study revealed two factors that are positively associated with the beliefs about the importance of advocacy: more time in the teacher education program and having other teaching experience besides ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). (Linville, 2015, Abstract)

School years can be hard enough for teenagers, but for the immigrants who are facing additional challenges, school years can be a lonely hell for them. That’s why it is so important for schools to build a perfect welcoming community that’s open and inclusive for all English learners as a foreign language, especially immigrants. (Will, 2014, First paragraph) This issue is an increasingly important issue that demands educators' attention as English-language learners continue to be the fastest growing segment in public schools that are facing difficulties in building the right comfortable environments for immigrants. (Will, 2014, Third paragraph)

“Students are most successful when they feel welcomed and part of the school community”; said David Lubell, founder and executive director of “Welcoming America”; a national organization that strives to build more inclusive communities for immigrants. (Will, 2014, Fourth paragraph)

We all were once students, and many of us are still ones, and we all felt that need for inclusion and welcoming, and we experienced some hard time struggling to try and love the school and make effort, but we couldn’t because of the negative feelings and impact it reflected on us. These are all things that we felt, though we weren’t immigrants. We witnessed no wars, no crimes, no hardships, and above all we were in our countries, our home, feeling included and safe. That tells us of the shifting role that is put on us as English language teachers, and of the responsibilities that we must accomplish in order to lower our students affective filters to help them learn and acquire all the components of language that they must, need, and want to learn. We must go from being only a language teacher but to be mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, supporters… and to take responsibilities beyond teaching that include helping students’ families acquire affordable housing, translate documents for parents, use different strategies and methods that meet each and every one of the students and that attract immigrants’ attention, and one of the biggest and hardest responsibilities is to persuade the school’s principals and the concerned ones to provide the schools, teachers, and curricula with more resources that serve the system of teaching the English language as a second language. This last responsibility is one of the most challenging responsibilities that demand from the teachers to fight a battle, because most of the schools and the principals will try to resist such changes in their schools’ systems, and wouldn’t take the needful steps to ensure the immigrants’ academic success as well as emotional well-being. (TESOL, 2013, Page 5)

Such needs aren’t electives or alternatives; they are a necessity, even state and federal laws required that students who do not speak English or whose native language is not English and struggle to perform classroom work in English, receive instruction that is designed to help them learn both English and mainstream course content. Such educational rights of ELLs and immigrants can be:

-          A free public education and equal educational opportunities: Immigrants and non-English speaking students have, by law, the right of a free public education and equal educational opportunities from Kindergarten until the age of 21, regardless of their immigration status.

-          Decide whether to enroll in an English Language Learner (ELL) program: Participation in an ELL program is voluntary, thus parents can choose to enroll or not enroll their children in an ELL program. Even if a family decides not to participate in an ELL program, the school still has a responsibility to ensure that the student has an equal opportunity to have his or her English language and academic needs met.

-          Evidence-based and effective ELL programs: Schools must provide high quality language instruction programs that are shown to increase English proficiency and academic achievement.

-          Alternative services: Schools must provide alternative services to ELL students until they are proficient enough in English to participate meaningfully in the regular program.

-          Accommodations when taking annual state academic achievement tests: Schools must provide LEP students with appropriate accommodations, as assessments that are in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data on what the student knows and is able to do.

-          Enroll in school and receive services: Students are entitled to receive all school services, regardless of legal status.

-          Not discuss, or answer questions about, immigration status: Schools may not ask about a student or parent’s immigration status. 

-          Provide alternative proof of student’s identity: School districts are required by law to ask for a certified copy of a birth certificate of every newly enrolled student. If you do not possess a birth certificate, you can provide other proof of the child’s identity and age and provide a sworn statement explaining why a birth certificate is unavailable. (Students Advocacy Center of Michigan)

However, advocacy isn’t an easy task that could be accomplished fast and with mere efforts. Advocacy needs time, experiences, and effort, and most important, teachers need to guide their steps in order to advocacy to be achieved.